


which remain untold

by gildedlily



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Cemetery, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, References to Ancient Greek Religion & Lore, Teeth, channeling mary shelley goth vibes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-16
Updated: 2021-03-16
Packaged: 2021-03-25 07:00:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30085242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gildedlily/pseuds/gildedlily
Summary: Soonyoung steals teeth for the god of death.
Relationships: Jeon Wonwoo/Kwon Soonyoung | Hoshi
Comments: 10
Kudos: 48





	which remain untold

**Author's Note:**

> “A story, after all, is a kind of swallowing. To open a mouth, in speech, is to leave only the bones, which remain untold.”  
> \- Ocean Vuong, _On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous_

_All of Thebes’s aristocratic families can trace their lineage back to teeth._

Soonyoung’s not used to this particular graveyard, but here he is, spending his Saturday night in the cemetery on the outskirts of campus. From his apartment window, the grounds look like a forest or the sprawling green of a manor house. Up close, he can see the crosses and statues that litter the field.

He’s sitting on a headstone, long past caring about respecting the dead, when a skeletal hand—not bones, but pale—emerges from the dirt. The rest of the thin figure slowly crawls out of the earth.

“Took you long enough,” Soonyoung says flatly, the granite cold underneath his hands.

“Not going to offer any help?” the newly unearthed figure asks, brushing the dirt off his clothes.

“You look like you got it handled.”

Wonwoo smiles dryly, his lips crooked, and holds his hand out for the payment. Soonyoung is sure that his mother has warned him against making business transactions in graveyards, which is just good life advice, but he hands Wonwoo the pouch of teeth, the tender that they’re dealing with.

“What, no small talk? You’re so boring,” Soonyoung says. Some nights, he wants to fling the teeth at Wonwoo and leave, livid that his Saturdays are marred by this meeting. Other times, he wants to stay and chat, and he resents Wonwoo’s indifference. Today, evidently, he’s feeling the latter.

Wonwoo grins. There’s too many teeth in his mouth. “You could be pushing a boulder up a hill instead, and then we would have plenty of time to talk.”

Soonyoung wrinkles his nose. Fucking weird death humor. What more can you expect from someone who enjoys lurking around cemeteries?

“Whatever, old man,” he says, more interested in the dirt flecks on Wonwoo’s boots than the pristine leather.

“See you next week?” Wonwoo asks, carrying the pouch in one hand. “And don’t think I haven’t noticed that this bag is lighter than usual. Find more bodies to desecrate next time.”

Soonyoung flips him off.

Wonwoo laughs, his nose scrunching, as the ground splits beneath his feet

Soonyoung steals from the death god as a child.

He had watched his grandmother be placed in the columbarium, the black urn against the white shelves like a pawn on a chessboard, before venturing outside. The whitewashed walls remind him too much of the hospital, the sterile room he spent his weekends in.

It’s raining outside. Soonyoung hides behind a headstone, the rain wetting his hair and his starched funeral suit, and wills the rain to stop.

A sudden shadow covers him, like the gods have heard his pleas. He glances up to see an umbrella shading him from the rain.

There’s a man with a black overcoat holding the black umbrella, his face shrouded. Soonyoung doesn’t remember his face, only his teeth, glistening white.

The man fishes out two lollipops from his overcoat pocket, holding them out for Soonyoung to choose. Despite his mother’s warnings to never take candy from a stranger, Soonyoung reaches for a lollipop anyways. _He’s probably a distant relative_ , Soonyoung justifies. Why else would he be here in all black, visiting an otherwise empty cemetery? As Soonyoung unpeels the wrapper, the man places the remaining lollipop back into his pocket.

And when Soonyoung thinks the man isn’t looking, he reaches his small hand into the overcoat pocket, slipping the other lollipop into his pants pocket.

When his parents later leave the columbarium and frantically call for him, he emerges from behind the headstone, still dry. The stranger is gone.

That night, Soonyoung takes the second lollipop out from his pants pocket and unwraps it. Instead of candy, there’s a tooth.

“If I married you,” Soonyoung says, cemetery dirt on his knees and his lips swollen, “would my debt be paid off?”

Wonwoo’s perched on the headstone like a god, his pants unzipped. Soonyoung is in front of him on his knees and has to look up to meet his eyes, like he’s swearing fealty.

Wonwoo snorts. “Bold of you to assume that I would accept your proposal.”

Soonyoung stares at him. “Psyche married Eros,” he says, “after she finished her four tasks.”

Wonwoo raises an eyebrow. “After she died during her last task,” he gently corrects. “And besides, that story doesn’t apply here.”

“Why not?” Soonyoung asks, defiant. The night wind carries his words.

Wonwoo smiles, his lips thin, showing no teeth. “You would resent me for it,” he says. “All that Underworld doom and gloom takes a toll on the human, pardon the pun, psyche.”

He extends a hand to run through Soonyoung’s hair, gently smoothing the strands down. That same hand had earlier gripped his hair so tight, messing up his hairstyle.

“Trust me,” Wonwoo says.

After Soonyoung gives him the teeth and before Wonwoo splits the ground open, Wonwoo apologizes.

“Forgive me,” he says, “you’re more like Psyche than I thought.”

“Why?”

This time, he shows his teeth when he smiles. “Psyche willingly married a monster.”

And then he’s gone, not even a scar left in the ground.

Soonyoung bullshits his Classics essay and thinks about gods inhaling the scent of smoke from sacrificial offerings, the smoke from animal bones.

He thinks about how he had offered Wonwoo a cigarette, white as bone, and Wonwoo had rejected the offer but lit his cigarette for him, his spindly fingers steady with the lighter. He had let Soonyoung blow smoke in his face, soundlessly inhaling the nicotine.

He thinks it’s probably morbid how much time he spends fucking around in graveyards and fucking in graveyards. He’s used to the stiffness of the headstones against bare skin now, the biting cold.

It is difficult to love the god who tricked him into collecting teeth from skeletons like a fucked up tooth fairy for the foreseeable future.

It is easy enough to desire him though.

Wonwoo’s cold scythe hands wrapped around Soonyoung’s throat, down his pants, pressing the points of Soonyoung’s teeth as saliva drips down.

His tongue running over Soonyoung’s teeth whenever they kiss, like possession.

And his own teeth. His serrated smile.

Wonwoo had once bitten down on Soonyoung’s cheek, leaving sharp imprints that were hard to explain away. _He’s_ allowed to consume to his heart’s content.

“Why do you collect teeth?” Soonyoung had asked Wonwoo when he was younger, speaking with a lisp because he had just lost a baby tooth.

Wonwoo, no longer a stranger but now a strange man, had smiled and reached behind Soonyoung’s ear, pulling out a coin and handing it to him.

“To preserve memories,” Wonwoo had said, and then popped the tooth into his mouth to eat, much to Soonyoung’s horror.

But now, looking back, maybe that was just another trick.

**Author's Note:**

> I’ll pull the trick if I want to  
> I’ll pull the trick and it comes true  
> I’m chewing gum and it’s killing you  
> We’re getting dead and it’s the right way to do it  
> I see you happy in the front seat  
> I see you with all of your front teeth  
> \- Lorde, “No Better”
> 
> thank you for reading!


End file.
